Two Admit Their Roles In '91 Murder Of Allentown Man * A Guilty Conscience Led To Their Guilty Pleas In The Robbery And Shooting Of A Drug Buyer.

September 24, 1997|by DEBBIE GARLICKI, The Morning Call

A man's guilty conscience solved an Allentown murder case five years after the slaying when the trail to the killers had long gone cold.

In February, the trail literally grew warmer in Florida after Angelo Alberto Cruz's desire to repent led to his arrest and that of co-defendant Fermin Arias.

On Tuesday, both admitted their roles in the slaying of Jay Tirado, who was shot at close range in the back of the head in his South Howard Street apartment Dec. 21, 1991.

Arias, 28, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and robbery and could get a maximum sentence of 20 to 40 years in prison. Cruz, 28, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, which carries a maximum term of 10 to 20 years. The childhood friends will be sentenced Oct. 22 by Lehigh County Judge Lawrence J. Brenner.

Assistant District Attorney Peter Richards said Tirado was a drug dealer who used Arias' connections in New York City to buy drugs. When Tirado got a supply he found unsatisfactory, he refused to pay the supplier, who then leaned on Arias to collect the money, according to the prosecutor.

Arias arranged to come to Allentown to meet Tirado on the pretext of bringing him more drugs. But instead, Arias planned to rob and kill Tirado.

Cruz, who Arias said was "like a brother," traveled to Allentown with Arias. Cruz wasn't involved in the drug trade, Richards said.

Once inside Tirado's apartment, Cruz took aside Tirado's 2-year-old son while Arias spoke with Tirado.

Cruz turned up the volume on the stereo to muffle the sound of what was to happen next and to ensure Tirado's son would be found.

Then Arias pulled the trigger of a .25-caliber pistol. Arias and Cruz stole $20,000 and fled the area, going their separate ways.

At one point in the investigation, police suspected Arias and used an informant to try to get a taped incriminating statement from him, but the plan didn't work.

The two New York men were reunited in Florida several years ago. Cruz, a manager of a Radio Shack in West Miami, hired Arias.

Cruz found religion and joined a church, where he was baptized, Richards said. Cruz confessed to a minister and another man that he had been involved in a murder a long time ago. He tried to get Arias to join the church and to confess.

In a Bible study group, Cruz revealed his secret to other people, who told a Miami detective who happened to be a member of the same church.

The detective's supervisor called Allentown police to ask if there was an unsolved murder fitting the description Cruz gave. Allentown police recalled Tirado.

Cruz, with no criminal record, confessed and implicated Arias, who Tuesday, for the first time, admitted killing Tirado.

In court, Cruz said he came to Allentown with Arias to try to talk him out of the plot to kill Tirado and to talk Tirado into turning over the money without anyone resorting to violence.

Unlike most defendants in murder cases, Cruz was jovial and warmly greeted the police prosecutor, Detective Victor Markowitz. After deputy sheriffs removed his handcuffs in the courtroom, he shook hands with the detective and asked how he was.

When the judge asked why he was pleading guilty, Cruz said, "It's the right thing to do. There was a murder that was committed. I was part of it."

At his hearing, Arias denied he was helping to supply Tirado with drugs. He said he was with Tirado during a drug buy in New York. People knew that, he said, and later approached him when they wanted to get in touch with Tirado because he owed money. The people threatened to harm him and his family, Arias said.

No members of Tirado's family were in court. Richards said he located a woman who is the mother of Tirado's two children, but she didn't want to attend the hearings. An uncle in New Jersey told Richards he would pass along news of the pleas to other relatives.